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— Timothy Budd-
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- An Introduction to Object Oriented Programming, 3rd ed
- Collected Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges
- From Dawn to Decadence
- Notes towards a set-objective language.
- To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design
- Anatomy of Movement
- The Psychology of Computer Programming: Silver Anniversary Edition
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Author Archives: Jacques Chester
Fancying, part 2.
For a long time I’ve linked from my book reviews to Amazon, giving both affiliate and direct links. I’m still doing it, but now I’m adding nice little visual callouts. To the right you can see an example. The concept … Continue reading
Posted in Site News, Technical Notes
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Fancying up the place
Book reviews have steadily crowded out other posts on my blog. So I’ve fiddled with my theme to make them both visually distinct and, at the same time, stink the place up a bit less. It took more fiddling than … Continue reading
Posted in Site News, Technical Notes
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Picturing the Uncertain World
Part of my current development project is conveying to people that estimates are uncertain. Every estimate comes with unforeseeable risks (and many foreseeable ones that nobody takes the time to foresee). But how best to represent this graphically? For some … Continue reading
Posted in Books
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Tested Advertising Methods
I’m not sure where I got the recommendation for Tested Advertising Methods (5th Edition) by John Caples and edited by Fred E. Hahn. It might have been a comment on Hacker News or possibly one of the fine recommendations that … Continue reading
The Essence of Hayek (Part 1)
In April I wrote a long, winding review of Drift into Failure. I was very proud of it: in the space of several thousand words I visited complex systems, fuzzy logic and the usefulness of positivistic thinking. It met with … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Economics and public policy, Systems
1 Comment
Effective Work Breakdown Structures / Project Estimating and Cost Management
As I said in my last review, I’m currently working up a tool to make it easier to create estimates. As part of my work I’ve been reading various bits of literature. Today Amazon delivered two books. At around 100 … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Estimation
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Practical Software Project Estimation (3rd Ed)
My current focus is to develop an estimation tool. Not just for software, but for a wide range of industries. Software estimation is, of course, closest to my heart, given that my line of work is software. This is where … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Software Engineering
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My experience with WPEngine (tl;dr, they sucked)
Today I read this by Jason Cohen. It’s an advertisement for WPEngine, masquerading as a missive about sustainable companies. In it Jason tries to talk up his company by virtue of the halo effect, comparing WPEngine to companies like HubSpot, … Continue reading
Posted in Rants, Site News
122 Comments
Waltzing with Bears
Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister are probably best known for the book Peopleware (unreviewed). It’s a justly famous book in my industry, containing as it does generous lashings of both wit and wisdom. Sadly, it is a book more honoured … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Software Engineering, Systems
2 Comments
The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing
Pricing is the driving force of a market place, allowing coordination of self-interested agents across wide divides of time, space and culture. And that’s as it may be. “But what price should I”, asks the frustrated manager or small business … Continue reading